Support pilot fish at a government agency has one user who's had a string of bad luck with software glitches and hardware failures -- and now something even stranger is happening.

"Today she called me to her office because there was a strange noise coming from her laptop and she thought the hard disk might be failing," says fish.

"Sure enough, as soon as I walked in the room I could hear what was obviously an out-of-balance rotary-fan type sound in the corner of the office where her equipment is."

Fish listens closely. He checks the laptop and dock, and makes sure everything is seated correctly. He removes the mouse cable from beneath the edge of the laptop, thinking maybe there was just enough space between desk and laptop corner to set up a resonating buzz.

But the sound is still there.

He stands up and notices the sound seems a little louder. Slowly, he turns around to get some directional input on the sound. It's still coming in from the corner. But it's louder than any out-of-balance laptop fan he's ever heard.

In fact, it sounds like it's something inside the wall.

So fish goes to the office suite next door, introduces himself and asks if he can look in the corner office to get a better fix on something that's going on between the walls.

"I walked into the office and immediately noticed an out-of-balance oscillating fan sitting in the corner adjacent to my user's office," fish says. "It was up on top of a metal, mostly empty, file cabinet.

"The fan was missing one of its rubber feet, so it was creating a buzz in the file cabinet that was tight against the metal corner of the office on the brace shared with my user's office.

"One folded Post-It note later, problem solved."

Post-Its are fine, but Sharky needs an emailwith your true tale of IT life. Send it to me at sharky@computerworld.com. You'll get a stylish Shark shirt if I use it. Add your comments below, and read some great old tales in the Sharkives.

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